BJP announces list of candidates for Goa Assembly polls, no place for Parikkar’s son

Panaji (Goa) [India], January 20 (ANI): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released its first list of candidates for Goa in which the party announced the names of 34 out of 40 candidates for the upcoming assembly election.
One of the most important names was missing from that list and that was Utpal Parrikar who is the son of the late Manohar Parrikar.
Manohar Parrikar has been the former chief minister of Goa and passed away because of pancreatic cancer while being in office as Chief Minister.
BJP has fielded Babush Monserrate from Panjim.
Responding to a query about the decision not to field Utpal from Panjim which happens to be Manohar Parrikar’s constituency, BJP Goa State election in-charge Devendra Fadnavis said, ” For our party, the Parrikar family is always our family. But from the seat that Utpal wanted to contest from we already have a sitting MLA and it would not be fair to drop the sitting MLA however we had given him the option of contesting from two other seats and the talks are progressing in that direction.”
Sources close to the Parrikar family, aware of the developments, told ANI that for Utpal Parrikar it has become more of a sentimental and emotional issue to contest from the seat where his late father was an MLA. Even if some members from the family convince Utpal to go ahead and contest from some other constituency that BJP is offering him, it is pretty certain that Utpal will not budge.
It is also being told by reliable sources to ANI that over the last one month also several top leaders of the BJP including party president JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah as well as Devendra Fadnavis have established contacts and spoken to Utpal to convince him but the response from him has not been affirmative.
“We have spoken to Utpal and told him that we will put his political career alive and that he should contest from the seat that we are offering where he would be in a position to win and just in case if nothing works party will not dump him.”
Meanwhile, a Member of Parliament from the Rajya Sabha in the Shiv Sena Sanjay Raut had put out a very cryptic tweet a couple of days ago seeking support for Utpal from all opposition parties to support his candidature if he contests as an independent candidate in Panaji.
While so far Utpal has not come out in the public about his decision to contest independently, the wait is still on, as BJP has kept candidature pending on six seats out of which one has been the one that the party had offered to junior Parrikar.
Goa will go to the assembly polls on February 14. The counting of votes will take place on March 10. (ANI)